


Sick Days

by ushauz



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fluff without Plot, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 12:44:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ushauz/pseuds/ushauz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat is trying his absolute best to be as miserable as possible, but that gets ruined when a friend decides to drop by and is determined to cheer him up whether he wants to or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sick Days

Down the hallway, a series of loud screeches come from your lusus, obviously upset about the lack of freely available roe cubes. You groan and sink deeper into your shitty reclining platform. You are currently burrowed under several blankets and are thoroughly miserable. This isn't a new development as you have been miserable for the past several nights and would very much like for it to stop being a thing. In a pique of desperation, you actually broke out a few pain-and-fever reduction tablets which did shit which is coincidentally how you feel at the moment. Everything aches, makes you feel hollow and brittle, and your joints feel swollen and throb in time to your head, and your skin is so dry and rough and keeps catching on stuff and peeling, and it's not even time for a molt. Your proteinchute feels like you've been chugging salt instead of what dubiously passes as tea, and you feel so very cold and also burning warm and just want to maybe go into torpor. You settle by nudging yourself into your cushions further, finding a spot that you haven't already made warm, and resting your forehead against the cool fabric.

Your lusus screeches yet again, and then a few more times until you realize he is screeching at the door. Your lusus long since decided that he was the doorbell for all occasions and is apparently trying his damnedest to do his job. You have enough brainpower to feel mildly alarmed for a few seconds but basic reasoning skills set in. If it was someone you hadn't personally introduced to your lusus, he would be doing a lot more than making a racket, so it's one of your friends.

This sucks for a completely different reason. You don't want anyone over. Maybe for forever. You have no emotional strength to deal with those assholes especially the pandering ones. If it's Sollux, you are personally going to fry out half of your thinkpan as he is the worst possible-pseudo-maybe-kismesis and will probably go into huge dramatic fits, think it's his fault somehow, and then mope around your hive dramatically. There is also the distinct possibility you will soon be sneezing blood somehow, and that would ruin everything, and then he isn't going to want to date you anymore.

You manage to care for a few more seconds and then give up. Maybe you would have a stronger self-preservation instinct if everything didn't hurt so much, and hey maybe you will get lucky, and you will end up sneezing blood, and whoever it is will instinctively cull you, and then your horns wouldn't ache so horribly anymore. Dying doesn't sound half-bad right about now. You could go for it.

Lusus continues to screech and make all sorts of noises but then quiets enough for you to hear faint murmuring but not audible enough for you to pick out whom. After a brief moment, you hear those same footsteps grow nearer and weird rustling, and you on principle refuse to turn far enough to see who it is. Fuck them for coming here right now

"Hey Kar," mystery guest drawls far too cheerfully, probably should be court-martialed and shot for that much cheer right now. This is worst scenario, all others pack up and go home. You attempt another hiss. You fail spectacularly and make weird lispy noises. Haha you sound like Sollux you are so braindead god.

"That good eh? I had figured you mighta come down with somethin' fierce due to lack of online socialities and all," Eridan says. He plops down on the cushions and blankets next to you and also so wonderfully in your line of sight so you can't pretend to ignore him. Everything jolts, and you succeed at making actual hissing noises and a very good attempt at kicking him in the arm. He ignores all of your obviously aggressive behaviors and just keeps talking. "Like that one time when you had that really nasty head cold, an everyone kept wantin’ you to sign off an actually get this weird thing called sleep. Fuckin’ irritable all the while an melodramatic enough to put me to shame but still chatty so you probably are feelin’ like absolute shit right about now. Lucky for you an pretty much everybody else, I am a damn good friend an have come prepared for such an occasion

He grins at you all teeth and twitchy fins and then lifts a large plastic bag. Inside are a few tubs of that super quality ice cream and even the flavors you actually like. You stare at the ice cream before giving him your nastiest glare. "What, you just going to buy your way into my good graces?" you rasp out.

He nods fervently. "Of course I am. What part a 'damn good friend' weren't clear as crystal? I ain't gonna let you sit an sulk an mope the entire time while being sick."

You glare at him. How dare he. You don't interrupt his melodramatic moping, and you deserve the same accordance. You wrinkle your nose and manage to roll over, which does make your head spin, but you are not going to put up with him right now. You hear him get out a tub of ice cream anyway and pry off the lid. A few seconds later it has appeared right in front of you, spoon already inside. The ice cream is in that wonderful state of perfection for consumption, neither frozen or gooey but just the right temperature despite having probably flown here with him on his lusus. And it's your absolute favorite flavor. 

Damnit.

He is going to ruin your moping.

As you curse his existence and reach for the spoon, he moves the remainder of the tubs to your thermal hull for you. Honestly, you should probably just give up now before he ends up buying you an entire new food preparation block or something.

He probably would. If you were a bit more well, you might be inclined to test that, but you don’t have the energy right now and resign to your fate of being looked after.

You grumble some more while winning competitions at "most awkward eating of ice cream in the history of the universe". Are you supposed to use that much elbow in eating ice cream? Your muscle memory is shot to hell, and every movement requires so much thought and concentration on how to actually do it, placing spoon in tub in such a way to get ice cream on it and not slide off and onto your blankets and then making the spoon enter into your mouth without jabbing your teeth. Extremely complicated maneuvering.

He comes back with a pill bottle you haven't seen before and some fresh tea. This confuses you since there shouldn't have been time to make tea but what do you know time has been weird and twitchy lately, weird little skips and slows. You take whatever pills he gives you and continue to dig into your ice cream as bitterly as you can while he starts setting up some kind of husktop with a portable projector thingy and then starts rifling through your DVD collection. After a bit of fussing and rejecting most of his picks, the two of you settle down and start watching an absolute classic of a blackrom with plenty of mindgames with a nice pale romance on the side.

To be honest, you were feeling more like a pure pale flick, you usually do when you get sick, but Eridan is here, and he does love his blackroms, always gets so eager watching. His eyes dilate and everything, and he tends to end up gnawing on his spoon and forget to actually get more ice cream on the thing first, and he doesn't even have the excuse of having his thinkpan currently be dribbling out of the aural canals. It is as cute as fuck.

It doesn't take long before you end up snuggling against him. In your defense, you are feverish and run burning hot on good days, and he is seadweller cool, your own personal icepack. He squawks and protests as you press your face against his back, but in that way that says he doesn't really mind and just likes talking for the sake of hearing his own voice. You chirr happily and feel a little bit less like shedding skin everywhere.

-

It's about a third of the way through the movie when the indigo protagonist is wooing his sidekick into a pile that Eridan starts making insinuations specifically about your choice of film and someone else you know.

You groan and bury your face into a cushion. That's nice. Maybe you will suffocate and die this way instead of dying by sheer embarrassment alone. "I'm not pale for Gamzee, okay?" you protest, voice muffled by several layers of stuffing.

You hear him scoff. "Oh come on Kar. That is the purest of hoofbeastshit I have ever heard. Me and Kan, we've been talkin‘, and we have you pegged. You are so pale for Gamz, don't even try to deny it."

You shift enough to glare at him as he sits there all smug and poised. "You've been gossiping with Kanaya," you say flatly. Totally not jealous at all

"Yeah, I gossip with Kan. What, this surprises you? Kar, I have gossiped with everyone in our little crew at least once and usually a lot fuckin’ more than most would care to admit. And yes, that includes one particular pissblood who likes to pretend he is above such mortal things."

You stare at him incredulously. "Nobody gossips with Sollux. That's impossible. The wiring part in his brain for that shorted out long ago and was replaced by billions of lines of codes. It's just not within the boundaries of our universe for Sollux to be able to gossip."

"Hate to break the universe then an cause untold genocide upon our race because he just so has gossiped with me. Just the one time, an I damn well made sure to print out the entire conversation and get it laminated. Bastard deleted the logs from my husktop later, but that's what the hard evidence is for." He waggles his eyebrows at you, and damn it and you and the entire universe, you believe him.

"Okay, seriously, what even about?"

"Oh, you know, about Fef an Ar an redrom drama an how Equius is actually weirdly sexy an how Sol totally has this huge crush on his robotic an engineerin' abilities. Might be a few things about you in there, but no worries I was a perfect gentletroll an didn't mention your paleboner for Gamz."

He then leans back completely satisfied with himself before sniffing and giving you a look. "Nice of you to change the subject there. Really, you've been going about this all wrong. No, stop groanin’ like you are birthin’ some alien parasite, you need to rethink your entire strategical plans here Kar. See, what you should have done is pop him a line or two, mention how you are all sick and helpless and oh no woe is me an of course yours truly can conveniently be out huntin’ or somethin‘, any excuse is good really. Then when he comes over, why there you are in your own pile of cushions and blankets, all nice an warm an oh so thankful for his help-"

You beat him with your cushion. He goes down in a trill of laughter as you mercilessly beat him with the pillow while absolutely not blushing pure red. There hadn't been any thoughts like that at all nope he's completely wrong and needs to die now end of story thanks for the audience participation everyone may now go home.

He eventually surrenders, or rather he takes scooches too far away for you to hit him anymore and that absolutely counts as a win for you, and the two of you go back to watching the movie again. You ignore his very rumpled hair and slightly flushed expression because if you did anything right now you would probably infect him with something, and then he'd be the one shedding and molting. You aren't quite that vindictive.

-

You aren't quite aware of when you fall asleep, but you wake up in your recuperacoon, the scent of something cooking wafting through your room. You rest for a while, eyes closed and just relaxing in the sopor before slowly squelching out and over to the shower. Everything still aches horribly, but you don't feel as hot and chilled as last night.

Once you are properly dressed, you fumble your way over to the food preparation block where Eridan has somehow managed to find enough ingredients to make some omelets with bits of grub and cheese. You gratefully accept a plate, and the two of you eat while chatting about annoying neighbors and FLARPing campaigns gone wrong. He makes you snort your drink out through your nose, and you manage to get him to choke at least twice, arguably thrice despite his protests that it was just an inconvenient hiccup.

Breakfast is exhausting though, and when you end up just laying your head down on the table to get the room to stop spinning, Eridan escorts you back to your reclining platform and into your pile of blankets. When he offers to watch another romcom with you, your eyebrows raise.

"You really are planning on keeping me company through this, aren't you?"

He shuffles a foot awkwardly. "Well, yeah Kar. Being sick downright sucks bulge, and you get especially broody when you are infected with pretty much fuckin’ anythin‘ and especially so when this limits your abilities to talk to anybody no matter how much you like to kick up a fuss. I don't have any psychic biohealin’ powers an personally wouldn't trust anybody who stepped forward, so it's the least I can do."

"Yeah but don't you have lusii to shoot or something? I am pretty sure all your little gestures would be rendered meaningless if my head exploded because some horrorterror got cranky."

He laughs which sounds only slightly forced before waving his hand. "No really. Fef ain't due back for carcasses for another few nights. Still makin’ the round trip. Takes a fuckin’ long time to swim to the depths of the ocean Kar. And yours truly happens to be a genius and has moved onto more advanced huntin’ techniques. I shot a skywhale with a tracer so I can track the movements of its pod for easy pickings later. It's really alright."

You raise your eyebrows. That would make things easier. That is a pretty smart move. He is succeeding at his attempts to impress you with his hunting abilities. Though this really isn't proof of anything since right now you would probably be impressed if Sollux showed you that he can type out the alphabet. "If I knew you were going to be around for a while, I would have picked a cinema series instead of a flick. Wow. Alright, let's watch through that one series with the rogue legislacerator and his morail."

He brightens considerably and dashes off to get more snacks despite having just eaten, fetching sugary things for you and protein-heavy things for him because he is of course going to grow another few feet while you burn your way through everything you consume and maybe grow another half-inch. He comes back, arms full of goodies including some highblood candies you didn't see yesterday, the fiend was holding out on you, and settles in beside you.

As the intro plays, you just relax. It's just so nice, having one damn person who knows about you and is close and a friend, someone you can trust to be close enough when you are this weak and helpless and let them help you. Never figured it would be Eridan, always thought he'd be one of the first to turn away if he ever found out, stayed up late at times dreading the night it would come when he would stop being your friend and when you might have to kill him to stay alive. Life's funny though. He chirrups happily and tucks you under his chin like a giant plushie, and the two of you just lie there for a while as the intro plays.

This is honestly getting the slightest hint of pale between the two of you, and that's not exactly what you want out of this, and you're pretty sure it isn't what he wants either, but you are way too sick right now to do anything else, and it isn't like the two of you have been divulging secrets or having feelings jams or anything, so you figure you are probably good. It'll all probably bug you later when you get well and have the energy to care about proper quadrant expressions and behavior, but it sounds like too much energy right now. No, right now you have a cuddly Eridan. He has a nice cold body and smells nice and is decently proportioned for proper cuddles. These are good things, nice things, appreciative things. You have ice cream in the thermal hull, some premade food and soups for you that aren't just flavored grub meals, and all these romcoms to watch. You are pretty okay with being sick for now.


End file.
